I’d like to move this discussion in a more meta direction and talk about the misuse and overuse of technique more generally in films, TV, and books in recent decades. If Tom thinks this should be a separate thread, that’s fine. (I started a thread in the books forum about this last year.)
I’d like to step away from the narrow issue of “no good jump scares” b/c I feel that’s kind of a semantic issue. Tom has defined “jump scare” in such a way that there are no good ones. However, I feel what Tom is describing is actually a misuse of the technique of “sudden use of fright or shock” in film, which IMO is a legitimate technique, IF used properly to fit the materials and the skills of the writers/actors.
And I would posit that pretty much ALL writing and filming techniques require similar caveats: they can all be a big positive, if they fit the material and if the writers/directors/actors/showrunners have the chops to pull the technique off well. If techniques are NOT used well, they can become cheap gimmicks and/or damage the quality of the work, and/or turn off viewers/readers big time.
To my point of view, we have seen a vast surge in the use of technique in multiple media in recent decades. I’ve talked about the misuse and overuse of multiple POVs in fantasy for example. Alan Sepinwall had a good article a few months back about the misuse and overuse of time jumps.
My theory is that in the current era of the explosion of publication by means of Kindle et. al., the explosion of TV with streaming, and the explosion of film with indie productions, that a lot of creators feel an exaggerated need to “stand out” and that the misuse and overuse of technique results from a desire to “pop” from the general narrative, to burst out of standard storytelling and say “Hey! Look at me!” That may catch eyeballs but does not IMO often result in better art or entertainment.
There may be other causes, follow-the-leader-itis, and various other things.
But I think you can look at our entertainment landscape and see the misuse and overuse of technique all over the place, turning useful creative techniques into gimmicks, essentially.
And the jump scare, as defined by Tom, is an example of that.